Two mobilizations came together this Wednesday in the center of the city of Córdoba and put the debate on the regulation of social protest on the table once more. Using separate lanes, workers from the provincial hospitals and the Piquetera Unit occupied the main avenues during the morning of that day, which caused traffic delays, changes in the bus route and the closure of some businesses.
Although the operation designed by the Police – in coordination with the Public Prosecutor’s Office – prevented the encampment (which was the method used in Buenos Aires), the Center was once once more “besieged” for several hours in the morning. The adjective seems nonsense, since it is a characteristic derived from the siege set up by an enemy.
In this context, the residents of the Center, represented by the lawyer Eduardo Bittar, began at the end of 2022 a habeas corpus that is going through its last days of processing: it is expected that in the next 10 days Judge Juan Manuel Fernández López will make public the resolution in which it would be established that the blocking of the street (even if it is half a road) by social organizations must be neutralized by the public force and the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
In the hearings prior to the resolution, Fernández López has argued that the encampment (or the permanent march) is a “direct attack” by the piqueteros once morest “fellow citizens, not the ruler,” and that such action violates constitutional rights and is conduct whose persecution is explicit in the Criminal Code and the Provincial Coexistence Code, so both laws “can give an adequate response” to the request of neighbors and merchants.
The guidelines that the judge would draw up will not prohibit the claim, but will seek that the demonstrations be notified 48 hours in advance and that they do not imply “the taking of public space” by social organizations.
In the case of union protests, they would not be affected by the judge’s resolution, since the right to strike of these organizations has a specific regulation (and protection).
In principle, the habeas corpus I would urge the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Police that they must keep in mind the respect and application of the norms that arise from the Criminal and Coexistence Codes; what the judge called in the previous hearings as an existing “catalogue of regulations” to “not consent to the blocking of streets, not even half a road.”
The lawyer Eduardo Bittar – who represents the neighborhood center of the Centro neighborhood – understands that “the constitutional plexus in the Argentine Republic is sufficient to safeguard social peace, freedom of work and movement through the streets together with respect for the right to protest and the mobilization”.
With his action, he tries to make the demonstrations “respect police protocols with aspects such as the middle of the road without invasion of sidewalks, sanitary corridors, and exit / entry of vehicles.” This is the focus of the discussion in Control Court No. 10, where the habeas corpus.
“Anti-picket” law
In the Legislature, the so-called anti-picket law awaits treatment in commission, which is actually a modification to the Coexistence Code to impose specific sanctions on protesters from social organizations that carry out mobilizations without prior notification, pickets and/or camps.
The project made compatible – there were proposals from the llaryorista Juan Manuel Cid and the radicals Dante Rossi and Verónica Garade – is resisted by schiarettist legislators and the allies of Hacemos por Córdoba, such as Socialism and the Evita Movement, in addition to the rejection of the leftist benches and the social organizations that consider it a criminalization of the protest.
However, the Constitutional Affairs commission – chaired by Cid – keeps the discussion on the agenda. He hopes to summon the General Prosecutor’s Office in the coming days to hear from Deputy Bettina Croppi the formal opinion regarding the possibility of enacting a specific law.
In the hearings carried out within the framework of the habeas corpus process, Juan Manuel Delgado, the Attorney General of the Province, was in favor of a surgical standard.
“Hopefully a legislative reform will be a kick for the doctrine to take a turn,” said Delgado regarding possible changes to “regulate the use of public space.”